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Every suicide where the victim had experienced domestic violence must be treated as a potential homicide, according to demands from advocates who seek to make perpetrators accountable for the devastating consequences of their behavior.

This move is essential because law enforcement are not doing enough to hold offenders to justice in instances of suicide after family violence.

“Time and again, there is widespread breakdown, particularly within the criminal justice system, to examine these fatalities with the seriousness they warrant,” remarked a leader of a campaign group during a landmark gathering in London earlier this week.

The assembly, arranged by a group running a “Self-Inflicted Death is Murder” campaign to fight for reform in the criminal justice system, brought together families who had suffered bereavement to suicide following domestic abuse.

Individual Accounts of Tragedy

One mother experienced the death of her child her 23-year-old daughter in March 2023. Prior to her passing, the young woman had reported her ex-boyfriend to police, submitting a two-hour video interview as evidence about his conduct.

Following her passing, the perpetrator was found guilty of manipulative and domineering conduct and imprisoned for 41 months. He was subsequently sentenced for an additional term after a another victim came forward to report that she had been in a violent and abusive relationship with him.

In the wake of her loss, the mother chose to advocate for a new law to bring perpetrators to justice; yet she then discovered that regulations were already in place, they just were rarely applied to achieve convictions.

“I concluded it wasn’t a fresh legislation I required as current statutes were in place, and after finding out how much my child had been let down previous to her death by the authorities and many other agencies, they had to fulfill their duties, and practices required reform,” she said.

“More than four dozen relatives have found me and just a handful of us have had a guilty verdict,” she continued. “I was so shocked to see such a large number who have been fighting the police and prosecution service for a long time and receiving no resolution for their child or sibling and didn’t have a voice in case it affected investigations that weren’t possibly going anywhere.”

Another Tragic Case

Saskia Lightburn Richie’s daughter her 30-year-old daughter passed away in spring 2017, in what she called “the final act of violence” in a campaign of abuse.

“She was vibrant, she was caring,” she stated. “She was full of promise, and she was an exceptional, deeply devoted mum to her kids, and she took her own life after two years in a relationship where she was methodically broken down by her companion,” she said.

“She was physically beaten, she was mentally tormented, she was dominated and broken down gradually until she could not see a path ahead. The man who caused this went unpunished, because we call it self-inflicted death, we close the file and we move on.

“But I could not move on,” she remarked, “and I have not managed to move on. Honestly, she didn’t just die by suicide. She was murdered. She was killed slowly and deliberately over a two year period, and when I went to the police, when I begged them to look into what he had done to her, I was informed that there was nothing that they were able to take.

“There was no investigation into her death. The domestic homicide review, which I had to struggle to obtain, took five years and had no impact. A lengthy coroner’s hearing determined self-inflicted death, despite substantial proof over a very traumatic multi-day session of domestic abuse and failings by multiple services.”

The mother told the meeting that for eight years she has “struggled against a system that refuses to see what is right in front of it”.

She said the suicide is homicide movement was vital “since when an individual dies by suicide after they’ve suffered family violence, we have to examine it for what it truly represents, which is murder.

“We must apply the laws we already possess effectively and it really isn’t happening at the present, and we need to hold abusers accountable for driving their victims to death.

“We have the laws. We require determination, we need police to investigate properly. We need the Crown Prosecution Service to take legal action. We need judges to recognize that verbal abuse and manipulation can kill just as much as physical force and arms.”

Government Reaction

At a second meeting in the House of Commons, led by a opposition politician, and attended by the government official, the bereaved relatives again told their stories.

A junior minister informed the assembly: “These deaths are often dismissed as if they were their decision, they chose to do this, when, in truth, these were the result of actually, another person’s abuse, and these are not rare incidents.”

“Our law is broken, we know that,” she said. “Especially around murder or unlawful killing, it is fragmented. It’s not written in statute anyway, it has been developed with traditional legal customs for centuries, and it is no longer fit for purpose, honestly, given the society we currently live in.

“I will not claim that it’s going to be easy to fix. It is incredibly complex and difficult, particularly when you look at the issue of murder, but we recognize that it needs to be looked at.”

Legal Authority Comment

A spokesperson for the legal body commented: “Family violence is a heinous offense and our prosecutors are regularly instructed to evaluate homicide allegations in self-inflicted death instances where there is a established background of domestic abuse or other manipulative conduct.

“We have previously charged a several individuals for causing the death of a partner they abused, encompassing in cases which are ongoing.

“We are also working with police and other parties to ensure these types of crimes are clearly recognized – so that we can bring perpetrators to justice for the complete scope of their wrongdoings.”